Chapter 4
Draven
“Hold,” Nevara ordered, her voice farther away than the distance should allow. Her milky eyes were unfocused. Paler than usual and distant—locked on a point in time that none of us could see.
Frost clung to her lashes, her narrow frame rigid and gleaming with starlight as if she were somehow caught between this moment and the next.
The Korythid hissed, its tail whipping through the air and sending a line of soldiers flying. Eryx’s snarl cut through the chaos as more ironfrost flared to life around his gauntleted fists.
“Visionary—” Eryx began.
“I said not yet!” Nevara’s answering voice was a crack of thunder. “If we want even a chance of saving the rest of our armies, you will wait. Everyone will wait.”
The Lord General stiffened, but obeyed her nonetheless.
Though my mana itched to be released, I leashed my power as well, muttering a curse to the Shard Mother as I waited for some celestial sign that might just give us the upper hand.
Then, the Korythid slammed one clawed limb into the ground, scattering a spray of ice and stone, and Nevara’s head snapped upward.
“Now!” she yelled.
Eryx moved first, slamming his palm into the frozen ground. His mana rippled outward in precise, geometric patterns, trapping two of the creature’s legs in jagged pillars of iron-forged ice. I called on the frost and wind, using every ounce of my mana to form a cyclone of ice.
Rain and snow hardened into more hailstones before sharpening into spears. Then, one after another, they slammed down into the narrow opening between the monster’s plated armor.
The impact sliced through muscles and tendons, sending a spray of black ichor into the air.
The Korythid shrieked and jerked around violently as another of its skeletal limbs crashed to the ground. Hot obsidian blood oozed onto the fractured ice, each fissure widening even more.
“Fall back!” I shouted as the ground split and swallowed the giant skeletal leg.
The sound of it falling echoed for far too long, like it was tumbling to Aerivelle’s very core.
We scrambled backward as fractures in the ice crept beneath our feet, stretching toward the palace walls. Fury and panic swelled inside me, and I focused my mana on freezing the ground before it could swallow the Winter Palace.
A blood-curdling scream echoed through the air as the Korythid scrambled on six shaking legs. It slipped on the ice, sliding through the inky blood pouring from its open wounds.
And still, it refused to die.
Instead, it writhed, its barbed tail thrashing and spraying venom while its eyes blazed with mindless fury.
For a moment, as the monster slipped over its own inky blood, scrambling on the ice and the frozen corpses beneath its feet, I thought we might win. That this fight might be over before anyone else exhausted their mana or died. But our small victory was short-lived.
Nevara’s mouth was half-open, her next order dying on her lips just before she gasped. Her gaze sharpened, her head tilting toward Redthorne and the barbed tail coiling above him.
No.
She moved before I could stop her, throwing herself in front of him, her arms wrapped around his body protectively as the Korythid’s stinger slammed into her spine.
The impact threw them both backward, a wet, sucking thwick tearing through the storm as it wrenched its stinger free.
Venom hissed as it landed along the ice, and the sounds of battle faded to the far corners of my mind.
For several, thundering heartbeats, time itself slowed. I raced through the ice.
“Damn you, Nevara,” I growled as Soren sat up, gently cradling the body of my best friend in his arms.
His lips were moving, but the words were lost to the howling wind, the monster's screams, and the unending sounds of battle.
Nevara didn’t answer him. And she didn’t move.